Fomite 75
by screening
Summary: [OPEN SYOT] It's the 75th Quarter Quell, it's time to celebrate! Eat and drink, be merry, and watch children beat each other to death! Or you'll notice that half the Districts are dying of an unknown disease, and we don't know how to fix it.
1. Fomite 75

It started in District 10.

It was kept quiet, but the Capitol was _always_ watching District 10 more than the others. It was, by both population and size, the largest district, because the consumption of meat by Panem was immense and only grew each year. In fact, a recent trend in the Capitol, popular for a decade, had pushed the consumption higher; "excess feasts", where a host seeks to impress their guests with their generosity by giving them more than they could ever hope to finish.

The Capitol had ordered 10 to increase production; and when production could increase no further by natural bounds, had ordered 3 to find the solution.

The response was twofold: inspection of genetic sequences to improve the size of livestock, and a treatment of antibiotics mixed in with the feed of the animals to prevent sickness and encourage steroidal growth.

When District 3 suggested this tactic, they requested the Capitol to exercise caution and to only use this as a temporary measure, citing the potential of antibiotic resistance rising in bacterium. District 3 probably anticipated the Capitol would take this seriously: the Capitol despised illness. But it must have seemed too distant and abstract a request in the face of the projected gains in livestock production, and District 3 were summarily ignored.

And so, a decade later, it started in District 10.

A couple deaths by illness was by no means uncommon, even in summer. A couple hundred deaths caught the eye of the Capitol authorities, and the Mayor was given a call to quarantine. The Mayor replied quarantine would be impossible in a district so large, and so the Peacekeepers relieved him of duty.

When a team of analysts from District 3 and the Capitol's Risk Management department arrived, they discovered a place in chaos. A third of all livestock were infected with a bacterium resistant to all broad-spectrum antibiotics. The bacterium had infected one-twentieth of the population, and the symptoms were unpleasant; pox-like itching, which if acted on became raw lesions that further spread disease. Couple this with a sickness like pneumonia, and you have an illness that, come winter, could become more deadly than it already was.

The information came as the 74th Games were held, and the Capitol made a choice to rig the 10th Reaping. A couple healthy children, picked from a healthy crowd. No need for panic if nobody knows to.

The 74th came and went, some Career from 2 wins, and all eyes turn to the Quell.

And as they do, the first of the Capitolian Risk Management Team falls sick.

* * *

 _Ever watched Contagion? Me neither. Presenting the new SYOT on the block: Fomite 75. If you've ever submitted to an SYOT, you know the drill: fill out the form, try not to write some identikit child prodigy who's shy but deadly, send it on to me, and I'll write them into my death arena for you. Fun all round!_

 _BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE: I like including Gamemakers/unusual POVs in my SYOTs. If you want to take a chance at writing a Gamemaker (no Head Gamemakers please!) who might get a little more individual screentime, I'm going to be a little more picky with them but feel welcome to add one to the bottom of another tribute submission._

 _And a special note to anyone who submits via 10, 12 and other rural districts; 10, despite Capitol efforts, have been decimated by this disease, nearly destroyed. 12 live in fear of the ill, and while they're not in as bad a way, about a fifth of the population died in the winter. All districts have more security, but 6, 9 and 11 have the most._

* * *

 **TRIBUTE AND GAMEMAKER FORM:**

Who are you?:

What made you who you are?:

What can the Hunger Games bring you?:

Alternatively, this standard form;

Name:

Age:

District:

Personality:

Backstory:

Best attributes:

Worst attributes:


	2. Marshall Fields Kills a Wolf

_With thanks to FandomForeva and cjborange for your reviews of the last chapter._

* * *

 **THE DAY BEFORE PATIENT 0**

* * *

"Center the sights."

Resettling himself where he lay in the grass, Marshall centred the sights on the shotgun. The dew hung around. One of his dogs, russet-furred and smart, huffed out a breath and settled down next to him.

"Okay."

Above him, crouching, a man in a flat cap, frowning out at the wolf in the pasture. "If he runs, wait a half-second for direction, then adjust ahead of where he is and shoot again. Do not look away from the sights."

"Okay."

"Now."

The sound made his dog jerk up and the wolf fall down. A spray of red liquid hung in the air around it.

The man in the flat cap exhaled. "Good."

Marshall smiled, jumping up and over the tuft of grass, his dogs barking and chasing him down to the corpse. The man followed behind as Marshall buried his hands in the wet-warm pelt of the wolf.

"He's beautiful," Marshall grinned.

"He's damn soaked in blood, boy, get your hands out of that." But the man was smiling, and Marshall knew he had done well.

* * *

 **TWO MONTHS AFTER PATIENT 0**

* * *

The problem was, of course, Marshall had always done well.

Marshall had never faced a concern in his life. His parents were distant, but ran a cattle conglomerate that kept them busy, and Marshall had never had much use of their presence; he had plenty of parental figures. Four thousand workers, half of Sector A in District 10, were kept in work by the efforts of his family, and Marshall, as the young and only heir, was prince of the land. He had been taught business by his father, the essentials of veterinary surgery from his mother, and the basics of livestock husbandry by the head of cattle, the man in the flat cap.

He had died a month ago, Marshall had heard. It was the last worker he waited for word on before shutting it all down.

The illness descended faster than anything he could have imagined. One day, he heard about a couple infected cattle from his mother; three days later, it was half of the cattle. School was cancelled, and Capitolians in hazmats descended soon after that. Marshall, through all this, didn't leave the house. He had left the doors only to, while wearing rubber vet gloves and a respirator mask, drag the bodies of his parents to the porch. He did not try to help them until then, just shut his bedroom door and gathered his dogs around him and waited, and he wasn't sure if he regretted the decision. He was still alive, and he held to that.

At this point, Marshall made the only decision that made sense to him; he locked the doors to the estate, dismissed all workers, and retreated. Bottled water and canned food stocks in the house were not much better than meagre but Marshall had been willing to ration them out. The dogs huffed at their new share. Cleaning supplies were ubiquitous, and when being indoors so long began to drive him spare, he began to fastidiously deep-clean the house. Eventually, the scent of lemon pervaded every surface of both the house and himself, permeated his senses such that he could no longer taste what he was eating out of a can each night. He woke with the dawn, slept with the sunset. He read medical journals, burnt them, and whistled his dogs into races. He tried to ignore the fact that despite his having drenched the house with lemon, he could smell rotting death from outside. He tried to ignore the fact that food supplies were running low. He cleaned the house again.

His dogs were taking up too much of what was left of the food, and crying, he opened the door and let them out, eyes shut as he did so, mouth and nose covered. They didn't want to go, but Marshall cracked open a bleary eye and kicked them until they ran. The second the dogs were gone, he shut the door, vomited from the smell, and set to cleaning again.

The whole experience felt dreamlike; the initial event had happened so quickly, the moments after stretching so long, that Marshall was starting to believe he had imagined it all. If he opened the door, he wouldn't be faced with the bloated corpses of his parents but a bright, thriving farmstead. As it is, all that kept him from being certain he had imagined it was that he couldn't hear anyone outside. He had drawn all the curtains the day he dismissed all staff: which is why he didn't see the staff returning two months after the fact.

A couple dozen left of the four thousand. They had grown desperate, it seemed, because they had armed themselves with whatever they could. The first Marshall knew of it was when a window broke downstairs: it didn't take long for him to rush to his parents' bedroom, where his father kept the shotgun. It took just as much time to situate himself out of sight, by which point he was ready.

The first of the survivors (thin, like their skin was stretched over their body) to step onto the staircase had their bowels torn out of their body at a hundred miles an hour. The second, running, lost his head, and Marshall reloaded, a grim smile at the only entertainment he'd had in months.

What followed was simple to execute but needed to be done quickly, but Marshall relished having something to do. When he ran out of shotgun shells, he pulled on his gloves and mask, picked up the cattle's tranq gun, and pitched himself against the last two. He was only sixteen, but they were barely standing up, and the first of them fell without much of a struggle. The second ran, and Marshall threw a beautiful District 1 vase at them as they did, but it missed.

At this point, Marshall decided waiting had lost its charm. He kicked open the door and stepped over what once had been his parents.

He emerged into a dead world.

District 10 was two hundred thousand strong, two months ago. Sector A alone accounted for ten thousand of that. As Marshall walked the roads of District A, then took an estate car and drove the rest, he guessed that at best, there were maybe two, three hundred left of Sector A. He did not remove his gloves and mask as he drove. He breathed slow and deep and even and tried not to cry.

A couple people tried to flag his car as he went past. The third to do it had deep, weeping lesions, dragging themselves bodily from the fields to the road. Marshall, losing composure, hit the acceleration and they crunched under his wheels, and he didn't lift from the acceleration for a full hour. He kept driving on, until the crumbling roads became grassier and the skies became darker. Eventually, he found himself driving to the District perimeter gate. Distantly, he imagined himself walking all the way to the Capitol. He could be a Capitolian. The hero who rose from the ashes of District 10. He could do that.

Glistening white signs blocking the road. He skidded to a halt. A figure in a hazmat suit came out from a corrugated iron shelter, raised their gun. One of the standard issue submachines that Peacekeepers use. Marshall raised his hands, and the figure gestured him out of the car. A long visual inspection.

"How old are you?" The hazmat suit finally asked. Marshall blinked.

"Sixteen. I'm Marshall Fields? My parents pretty much ran this sector."

"My associate's going to take you to a decontamination. In this time, do not interact with any person. Do not touch anything. Do not attempt to approach us unless commanded, or we will kill you with extreme prejudice."

Marshall blinked again. In the harsh spotlights the Peacekeepers had rigged up, he felt lost and stupid, a lone figure in bloodied veterinary gloves and a respirator mask, scalp churned into his car tires. A hazmat on the left commanded him, and he followed.

He left his shotgun behind in the car.

* * *

 _Thank you very much to Blade is my Penname for submitting Marshall Fields, the D10M tribute for this SYOT._

 _With the exception of District 10, this SYOT is still wide open, and submissions are greatly welcome. Thanks to everyone who's expressed interest in/has submitted a tribute so far!_


End file.
